Monthly Archives: November 2016

A lawsuit filed by the CFPB earlier this month underscores the importance of its efforts to take on the abuses of the debt-collection industry, both by enforcing the law, and through a rulemaking process that is already underway.

The lawsuit – against two debt-collection magnates operating out of Buffalo, N.Y. – involves a nationwide operation that is said to have engaged in outrageous practices, causing massive harm to millions of people. In its filing, the Consumer Bureau describes the two men, Douglas MacKinnon and Mark Gray, as the “ringleaders” of a network of companies that “harassed, threatened, and deceived” consumers, making tens of millions of dollars a year in the process. Since 2009, the action charges, McKinnon, Gray and their companies have been buying up payday loans and other defaulted debt for pennies on the dollar, routinely adding $200 to each acquired debt (regardless of whether the law allows that), and using a variety of illegal practices to collect. Some consumers have reportedly been pressured to pay as much as six times more money than they really owed.

Employees of MacKinnon’s and Gray’s companies, the lawsuit charges, impersonated law-enforcement officials (sometimes using “call-spoofing” programs to create the impression that they were phoning from government offices) and threatened legal action they had neither the power nor the intent to actually take – arresting a consumer for “check fraud,” for example.

According to the suit, MacKinnon and Gray manage three Buffalo-based debt collection companies – Northern resolution Group, LLC (NRG), Enhanced Acquisitions, LLC (Enhanced), and Delray Capital, LLC (Delray), and have set up a network of at least 60 firms “to collect on the debt portfolios that NRG, Enhanced, and Delray purchased.” The defendants directed and encouraged these illegal acts, and profited significantly from them, the lawsuit holds, adding that “tens of millions of dollars annually” were “funneled back to MacKinnon, his relatives, and Gray through payments to various sham companies controlled by them.

The lawsuit charges MacKinnon and Gray with violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Acts, which prohibit unfair and deceptive acts or practices in the consumer financial marketplace. The Bureau is seeking to shut down their operation and secure compensation for victims as well as a civil penalty against the companies and its partners. “[T]his suit sends the message that debt collectors that employ abusive tactics will be held accountable,” New York Attorney General Schneiderman said in a joint announcement of the action. — Veronica Meffe

Wall Street will set still another record for political spending this election cycle.

So far in 2015 and 2016, banks and financial interests have put more than $1.4 billion into efforts to elect and influence holders of national political office, according to Wall Street Money in Washington, a new report released this week by Americans for Financial Reform based on data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

That spending total works out to more than $2.3 million a day!

Financial sector companies, employees, and trade associations have reported making nearly $800 million in campaign contributions since the start of 2015, more than twice the spending level of any other specific business sector in the Center for Responsive Politics database.

Some of the financial industry’s biggest donors have been hedge funds, with James Simons’ Renaissance Technologies and Paul Singer’s Elliot Management leading the way at $37.5 million and $20.2 million respectively. Of the campaign contributions that can be clearly linked to one political party or the other, 61 percent have gone to Republicans and 39 percent to Democrats.

The financial industry’s expenditures – about $667 million through the second quarter of 2016 – place the sector in third place, behind a category of “Miscellaneous Business” companies and trade associations at $780 million and health-related companies at $775 million.

These figures do not count much of the so-called “dark money” contributed to nonprofits that engage in political advocacy or the money spent on lobbying-related research and support activities. Nor do they include spending by “Miscellaneous Business” entities like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a national business group that lobbies extensively on financial issues.

Wall Street political spending has increased sharply since 2009 and 2010, when industry forces were trying to blunt or defeat the reform legislation that came to be known as Dodd-Frank. The legislation was eventually enacted over industry objections in 2010, but that just marked the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.

Since Dodd-Frank’s passage, big banks and other financial interests have been working nonstop to block, delay, and weaken important elements of that law – as well as the agencies responsible for carrying it out. At the same time, they’ve also been working to stymy efforts in Congress to move forward on the next steps needed to make sure Wall Street serves Main Street, instead of continuing to put us all at risk.

Another new AFR report, Where They Stand on Financial Reform: Votes Cast in the 114th Congress, details many of the financial industry’s latest efforts to avoid needed reform. Wall Street has enjoyed some real success in this lower-visibility phase of the battle, using a “must pass” 2014 budget bill, for example, to repeal an important provision of Dodd-Frank and let big banks go back to using insured deposits and other taxpayer subsidies to gamble on the riskiest of financial derivatives.

Since 2010, Wall Street-backed deregulation proposals have continuously clogged the legislative pipeline. In the current Congress alone, lawmakers friendly to Wall Street have introduced 10 separate legislative proposals to limit the authority or political independence of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Meanwhile, despite polls that show lopsided majorities of Republicans as well as Democrats and Independents favoring tougher Wall Street regulation, Congress has yet to vote on a single bill that would move things in that direction.

The $2.3 million a day Wall Street executives are spending on politics certainly rates as a lot of money. But measured against the many special privileges that the financial industry and its execs continue to enjoy, that expenditure amounts to a smart investment – for Wall Street.

Categories

Meta

This blog is maintained by AFR as a forum for ongoing news and commentary about the fight for effective financial reform. Blog posts represent the opinions of their authors / posters, and do not necessarily represent the views of the AFR coalition or coalition members.